Photo Courtesy David Lebovitz, http://www.davidlebovitz.com
My grandmother hides meat in my food. Beef is buried in my mashed potatoes, bits of chicken lurk in my rice like tiny insurgents--edible enemy combatants, undercover and waiting to strike. I love my grandmother dearly, but I've learned never to accept soups from her--the murkier, the riskier--and to keep a sharp eye should we sit next to each other at restaurants. For an 83-year-old, she's got surprisingly nimble little hands.
I'm a vegetarian, you see, and learning to accept that many people will never accept my lifestyle is just part of living without meat. In fact, it's the hardest part, as I explain in this first installment of a series on reconciling love of food with the choice to live as a vegetarian.
The story of how I came to be, as Anthony Bourdain put it, "enemy of everything that's good and decent in the human spirit," is similar to most. I'd long thought that eating a (once) living thing seemed fundamentally immoral, and I knew factory farming was as bad for the environment as its products were for my health. But I adored the taste of it--smoked salmon in the morning, a good burger for dinner, bacon at any time or place--and I doubted my ability to execute such a major transformation. So it went for years, with vegetarianism making sense to me in the abstract but seeming impossible in the actual.
Family members launched an orchestrated campaign of guilt and temptation. Holidays became more like interventions.The catalyst, the push that finally got me to overcome the fears that it wouldn't be worth it and the doubts that I could even do it, was that same impetus of so many changed lives: heartbreak. I needed something to take my mind off the hurt, and I was barely eating anyway. So I emptied the fridge, read a few articles on vegetarian nutrition--"take B vitamins, get enough protein"--and started my new life.
The first few weeks were tricky. I craved meat constantly, even in sleep--I dreamt about fried chicken every night. Restaurants were the worst: menus were like propaganda pamphlets, covered with warnings about the challenges ahead ("you mean you don't serve a single thing I can eat?") and succulently persuasive arguments to rejoin the carnivores surrounding me.
Eventually, I learned how to scan a menu for the edible-to-me dishes. Cheeseburgers, once a terrible temptation, don't even look like food anymore--they look like little discs of dead muscle tissue, which, it's easy for us to forget, is what they are.
That's when the real challenge started: coming out of the closet. I'd kept it a secret at first, in case I faltered or changed my mind. But soon I knew I was a veggie to stay, and that meant sharing it. I had no idea what I was getting into.
Family members launched an orchestrated campaign of guilt and temptation. A relative who remembers my fondness for smoked salmon has it out whenever I visit. "Chicken isn't meat," another still tells me regularly. "You can eat it. I got you some." Holidays became more like interventions. Only easy-going Uncle Joel let me be--although his frequent invitations to join him deer hunting raise some questions.
Of course, their attempts at reverting me were rooted in love--they sincerely believed I wasn't living as full or healthy a life without meat. But giving it up has only made me healthier and increased my already-deep appreciation of food. Sources of easy meals are gone--restaurants from McDonalds to Bouley, deli counters, most takeout--so I cook nearly everything, and am more skilled for the time and energy that must go into every meal. People think vegetarians subsist on dreary, flavorless, tofu-filled meals, but the truth is that I've never eaten better.
The most difficult part of being vegetarian is the misconception that we judge or, worse, want to convert meat-eaters, an assumption I blame on PETA's vitriolic ad campaigns, which suggest a mindset of herbivore heroes versus carnivorous villains.
When I tell someone about my diet, their first reaction is almost always to apologize, as if even mentioning meat to me were like telling an evangelical Christian they'd performed an abortion that morning for fun. "You know," they always tell me, "I barely eat meat, and I'm seriously considering becoming a vegetarian."
I've learned to wait until the second or third date to let my secret slip, an announcement I make carefully, almost guiltily, as if admitting I had children out of wedlock. And sometimes that's about the reaction: "I didn't know you were one of them." But the most frequent is, surprisingly, relief--more often than not, she's a vegetarian too.
Yes, most of my relationships since going veggie have been with fellow meat-refusers, though it's not deliberate. Maybe there are certain personality traits common to vegetarians--I'd like to believe we're compassionate, thoughtful people, but I'm probably just flattering myself. After all, Martin Luther King, Jr., ate meat and, yes, Hitler did not. (Maybe.)
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My wife's a vegetarian and I have nothing against vegetarians. But you're shirking your own responsibility when you blame PETA for meat-eaters feeling judged. Right in your own article you use bizarre emotional terms like "dead" and "tissue" to refer to meat. Are you suggesting seriously that we humans have some other choice than eating dead tissue? How much of your plant matter is living tissue when you eat it?
You missed the descriptor "muscle" between "dead" and "tissue". That's what distinguishes dead animal tissue from dead plant tissue, since plants lack muscle.
And, as a meat eater myself, I feel that it's important to remember where the meat comes from.
Um...meat is dead muscle tissue. If you find these accurately descriptive words to be "bizarre" and "emotional" perhaps it's indicative of your own discomfort with the realities of your diet.
That said, as a vegetarian, I don't care what anyone else eats and have never tried to convert anyone. Meat eaters, however, have often in the past given me grief about my diet.
Blaming PETA does seem like something of a cop-out. In the few years I spent living in veggie hot-spots (3 years Seattle, 6 months San Francisco), I was never more reminded of the religious sanctimoniousness of my small-town Southern upbringing than when I tried to get something to eat with vegetarians. Sure, it's easy to blame the Pat Robertsons and the James Dobsons of the world (or, in this case, PETA) for your religion's image problems, but the bottom line it is vegetarians' own inflexibility that turns the rest of us off. Never eat meat? Not even on Thanksgiving? Not even when invited to a dinner that someone else has put great effort into preparing? Just for some imagined karmic purity? You'll forgive me if I don't resist the impulse to roll my eyes.
Maybe the vegetarians you knew were really irritating and constantly guilt-tripped you about not eating meat, but your examples here are more of you trying to pressure your friends into doing something they felt was wrong. Would you blame someone who keeps kosher for not eating ham or a bacon-wrapped scallop that someone had cooked? Many (though not all) vegetarians believe it is morally wrong to eat meat - it remains morally wrong whether it is Thanksgiving or any old Thursday and whether they cooked the food or someone else cooked it.
Inflexibility?? Are you flexible on your morals?? What's the big deal if we are inflexible. Why does it matter to you if we eat meat on Thanksgiving or not?? When a person chooses to not eat meat because it is dead flesh, that's pretty much a decision that one wouldn't compromise just for a holiday. And, calling karma imaginary is quite dangerous......how do you know what you believe in isn't imaginary. Forgive me while I roll my eyes!!
I think everyone here should just drop the judgemental attitude. Who really cares what other eat.
Do you regularly offer pork to orthodox jews or devout muslims? How about some fish on Friday to a practicing catholic? Why one might choose not to eat animals is really none of your business and absolutely not for you to question. If you feel judge you might consider a little self reflection
Fish is allowed for Catholics on Fridays. What is prohibited (and I believe only on the Fridays of Lent) is basically meat from warm-blooded animals. There are a few exceptions, and they usually relate to animals that spend so much time in the water that the locals consider them closer to fish than land animals.
Yet you show the exact same "inflexibility": Never skip meat? Not even to give it a fair shot? Not even when invited to a meat-free dinner that someone else has put a great effort into preparing?
And who said anything about "imagined karmic purity"? How does the desire (a) to be healthier, (b) to reduce your impact on the environment, and (c) to avoid harming a creature that feels pain and terror equate to "religious sanctimoniousness" or new age bunk? It sounds to me like the foundation of a thoughtful and compassionate lifestyle that is respectful of life.
Yes, you have to kill to live; there's no way around that. But does that honestly lead you to the conclusion that there's no difference between eating a plant-based diet and a diet that depends on acres upon acres of sick, diseased animals living out the remainder of their miserable lives wallowing in their own filth and pumped full of antibiotics?
I agree that there are very off-putting vegetarians and vegans -- but that's true of any lifestyle. When you consider the meat-gulping, over-consuming, wrap-it-in-Styrofoam, bigger-is-better, god-put-us-here-to-rule-the-world American lifestyle -- which is literally devouring our planet -- I don't think any of us have the luxury to roll our eyes and chalk the push for a more compassionate, organic, vegetarian lifestyle up to quasi-religious fanaticism. That's the true cop-out.
Looking forward to your series. A few quick thoughts:
(1) I admire those who become vegetarian. I don't think could -- I've always been vegetarian so keeping it up is easier (you can't crave what you haven't tasted).
(2) In India, vegetarianism requires no apology from either side, from the one eating meat or choosing not to -- there's no proselytization involved. When I'm out with people I don't know, if I find everyone else ordering vegetarian, I make it point to let them know that they should not do it for me -- they should feel free to do as they please, since that is what I'm doing.
(3) The problem in the US is that vegetarians are such a mixed bag: some health vegetarians; some vegetarians who eat fish (and some who also eat chicken); some just doing it for their own principles.
(4) In India, vegetarianism has to do with tradition and principle, neither health nor religion (at least for Hindus, whose only restriction is to avoid beef; Jains are another matter -- they are required to be vegan). For that matter, Indian vegetarian food can be very unhealthy.
(5) And my final point -- That is why it is wrong to think of vegetarians as passionless proselytizers. Some maybe, but not all are. Personally, I would be delighted if it were discovered that vegetarianism were an unhealthy diet -- that way a vegetarian's motives would become clearer -- I could part company with the health vegetarians and unmistakably join the ranks of food lovers.
BB
There is simply no such thing as a vegetarian who eats fish or chicken.
Max Fisher, nice article on your personal experience with becoming a vegetarian and the way people react to it. How ironic that the first comment you got was from a defensive meat-eater . . .
I'm not currently a vegetarian, but I was for several years, and during that entire time my mother NEVER let up on trying to make me eat meat. And I'm not talking about simply not being accommodating; I certainly never have expected her to cook specially for me just because I wasn't eating meat. No -- I'm talking about walking into the house for a short visit, not at mealtime, and having to put up with her going on for five minutes about how I should eat a hamburger and that she was going to make one for me. That kind of aggressive rudeness on the part of people who feel vegetarianism is weird or unnatural, or that vegetarians somehow hold meat-eaters in moral judgment, pales in comparison to, say, describing a burger patty as what it, in fact, is, which is dead frikkin' muscle tissue.
More irony: While I'm now happily cooking all sorts of meatstuffs, Mom's now a vegetarian. I bite my tongue, I do.
nolo, my apologies if I come across as defensive. I'm trying to help bridge the divide, here. I do not feel judged by most vegetarians.
I do find dead muscle tissue quite tasty. I also find dead connective tissue tasty in some cases, though plants have usually tastier connective tissue than animals do. Plants do not have muscle tissue, but if they did I'd probably like it. I also like to eat milk that's been stewing in bacteria for a while, if it's the right bacteria.
My point is that the description of meat as "dead frikkin' muscle tissue", while accurate, does not strike me as exactly dispassionate. As I said, all food is dead tissue of various sorts, unless it's living tissue of course. By using such language the author is implicitly stating a case that meat is inherently disgusting, which is not a rational argument and also implies that meat-eaters are awful because they can't tell how disgusting meat is. This is not good for your case.
Sorry if I thought you were being too defensive. But I didn't read Tim's remark as an effort to make meat sound disgusting -- I thought he was simply describing the end of a personal process for him where the burger went from being (a) a delectable, tasty treat that he craved and missed to (b) something that had become neutral from a culinary standpoint, and no longer had any interest for him. But dude, don't dis animal connective tissue -- it's what makes osso bucco (and braised short ribs, and oxtail, and plain old beef and chicken stock, for that matter) the glorious things they are. In fact, if the only meat I ate was burgers and steak, I probably wouldn't care if I didn't eat them again. I think I could easily go back to vegetarianism if it weren't for animal connective tissue. The textures and mouth-feel that come from slow-braised connective tissue are the one thing I haven't been able to duplicate in non-meat dishes.
Hi everyone,
I was completely UNsurprised that the first comment was a meat eater complaining about vegetarians... my experience as a 34 year old who's been veggie for almost 20 years (for many of my own, personal reasons) is that people LOVE to talk about what I am eating (and not eating). I have strong opinions on politics, religion, and diet and I will discuss all of these except for that last one. In many (oh, so many) of these encounters I get the feeling that the fact that I exist is an insult to the person I am arguing with.
So, for all you meat-eaters out there, just imagine if you were a member of a minority group that made up about 3% of the US population (saw this statistic on a news program the other night). It's not hard to imagine that some veggies might have a chip on their shoulder if (like myself) they have had a lifetime of obnoxious discussions with meat-eaters. Me? I just avoid the conversation if I can...
I'm always surprised when I see articles like this, it seems such a 70's experience, like being "actual friends" with a person of another race. Vegetarianism while not dominant by any means is pretty well established at this point and the fact that being one for some people is a big deal says more about them and the people they are around than it does about where this type of diet stands in the wider world. Even in the most rinky-dink rural towns I've found restaurants with a fair number of vegetarian options, some specifically catering to them. The fact that some people point to animal rights groups and unyeilding diet fanatics as a reason for scorn is a bit easy. You could point to all of the extreme things hunters, heavy meat eaters, and fans of offal have done over history to make the same arguments but why bother? The same should be said for vegeterians.
Mr. Fisher,
Thank you for this article. As a vegetarian I laughed out loud of some points. I have often been told by numerous family members that "chicken isn't meat". I also appreciate the recipes. I agree that since becoming a vegetarian my eating habits have become much more interesting.
My girlfriend is a meat eater and constantly insists she won't stop eating meat. I smile as she goes on eating the tofu stir fry I just cooked.
Best
This year, I've gone "almost" vegetarian, and am having a great time.
At the end of last year, it seemed my cholesterol levels were high, and my cardiologist said he'd seen people go vegan and drop their LDL levels by 2/3 - in a month! "Really? I said. "I can do anything for a month", and so it started.
And, in a month, being vegetarian but without going totally vegan (no meat, but cheese and fish OK) I have dropped my LDL by 1/3 to a perfectly healthy level. Wow! Since then, I've kept it up, and the number keeps nudging lower.
The side effects - I've lost 15 pounds without even trying, yet I have more energy and am eating more diverse and interesting foods. Perhaps being in California, it's easier (we always have a meat and a vegetarian main course in our company cafeteria, to serve all the Indian software engineers and now me), and I've never had any trouble asking for and getting vegetarian options in restaurants. And my family is fully supportive - they certainly don't want my heart stopping any time soon.
Every so often, I get a craving for some meat, which I let myself indulge once a week. Funny thing - as time goes by, those cravings diminish, and the indulgence (usually Bacon or BBQ - love it!) becomes less satisfying as time goes by.
The next step may not be so comfortable - if this is so effective, and we have such a huge problem with heart disease, why isn't everyone promoting this? My Dr. says the Beef lobby is extremely powerful, and I guess the carrot and broccoli lobby just doesn't have its act together. Too bad. This is really good, with no need to pay a gym or take any pills. I wish more people knew.
BTW, any good veggie BBQ recipes out there?
There is a great veggie BBQ recipe in a cookbook called "Simply Heavenly- The Monastery Vegetarian Cookbook". It's made of wheat gluten, which you can buy in a box in the baking or natural foods section of most grocery stores.
I quite enjoyed this article--I am also a vegetarian with a somewhat resistant family. However, I firmly think that committed meat eaters should not see vegetarians or anyone else's food choices as an automatic assault on their own option to choose what they eat, nor do I think they are behaving any better by trying to point out supposed ethical inconsistencies in others eating eggs but not meat, or fish but not chicken. These types of knee-jerk defenses of the status quo (i.e., it's ethically neutral to be a meat-eater) are no more welcome or useful than obnoxious vegetarian evangelizing.
Thanks for the article- I've been a vegetarian for 17 years (since I was 13) and I'm all too familiar with the "conversion" attempts by family. It took a while... about 10 years, actually, but they finally gave up. My boyfriend is currently attempting the same thing- he'll learn. Ha. :)
Hello Max,
Thanks for the recipes; please post more. I would eat more vegetarian stuff if I just knew how to cook it!
Apparently you do not eat chicken.
I notice (since your recipes call for it) you have no problem eating milk, butter, cheese and eggs.
If cheeseburgers don't even look like food to you since they are little discs of dead muscle tissue, why does:
Milk look like food to you since it comes from a cow's _______?
Eggs look like food to you since they come from a chicken's _______?
Vegetarians may not want to convert people, but the vast majority of the ones I've known want to control where others eat. I'm not a big meat fan, but I can't count the number of times I've seen vegetarians shoot down restaurants where *I* would have ordered vegetarian dishes. The constant refrain from them: we want to eat at places with no food diversity, even if it means that the vegetarian dishes suck...And that I wouldn't understand, because I'm not a vegetarian.
This is a nice read. Your experiences closely mirror my own - my grandmother used to put ham in my beans and insist that it was "only for flavoring" while my mother told me that my diet was "just a phase." Of course, that was 1991 and I'm still going through that weird vegetarian period.
When I first started out, my diet was terrible. I had no idea what I should be eating, but, over time, I developed some reasonable cooking skills and some semblance of a balanced diet. In fact, my diet is far more diverse than it ever was when I was younger (that may, however, have more to do with getting older and bolder). And, while I don't get too many people apologizing to me for their meat eating habits, I still get the occasional, "you're a vegetarian? what do you eat?" I'm convinced that a fair percentage of people think that vegetarians subsist on a diet of "sides."
Say what you will about PETA (I pretty much agree with the assessment of their negatives), I do admit that, as an impressionable teen, it was one of their pamphlets that actually encouraged me to become a vegetarian. My reasons for my diet have always been rooted in compassion, but my critical view of a meat-based diet has been tempered by an acceptance that I cannot change how other people think - or eat for that matter. I can understand the passion behind PETA, I just wish they would understand why so much of the world is put off by their approach.
In the same article, you claim that you do NOT judge meat-eaters, yet you clearly write, "I'd long thought that eating a (once) living thing seemed fundamentally immoral." That's called judging. See? When you decide what is and is not moral, you are judging. I've always had a little bit of a problem with vegetarians who abstain from meat for moral reasons. When you proclaim a moral standpoint, you are judging others who feel differently. See.. this it he problem with religion. Ugh, don't get me started....
So, it would be okay to be a vegetarian for no reason at all, but not because you think eating meat is bad? I just don't get that...
I don't usually feel the need to defend my vegetarianism and usually go out of my way not to make a point of it (esp. when eating). But every now and then someone will ask over a meal why I'm a vegatarian (usually with the phrase "meat is so good" somewhere in the question). I'll usually try to quickly explain that I think it's a moral thing and move on, but sometimes I'll be pressed and have to explain about how pigs have the intelligence of a human child, the horrible conditions in factory farms, etc. And yet, after being pushed and prodded into the conversation, I'll get looks back like, "How dare you bring that up while I'm enjoying a cheeseburger?" And this is in New York City...
i laughed out loud when you said you dreamt about fried chicken.
i have been a vegetarian for over 20 years, and never have missed meat much in my waking life. but i still sometimes dream about eating meat, and it is *always* fried chicken!
the thing that bugs me is when i am going out with friends and someone will say 'we can't go to that restaurant, because there is nothing for you to eat there,' even though i am fully capable of making my own food choices, and as long as there are french fries on the menu, i am good.
I'm not a vegetarian because:
* you can have a perfectly healthy diet that includes meat;
* vegetarianism itself doesn't lead to a longer life;
* our bodies are well-adapted to consuming meat;
* meat-based diets taste better, something most leading chefs agree with and which this foodie has found to be true;
* animals can be slaughtered humanely if we insist upon it;
* carnivores in the wild will continue to kill whether we like it or not;
* I'm a libertarian who doesn't like to boss others around;
and...
* my brother is a vegetarian who only eats cheese pizzas and forces my poor mother to do culinary backflips to cater to his obsessive ways, a manifestation of his spoiled status and hunger for special treatment even into his thirties that has made family gatherings painful and sad affairs.
One thing I woulld contest is that "meat-based diets taste better" - I'm pretty convinced (after about four years as a vegetarian and 26 years before that eating meat) that the real issue here is that our culinary traditions have focused so much on meat that a lot of chefs have no idea how to make vegetarian dishes well. That's why vegetarian options at restaurants often totally suck (this is also true of a lot of vegetarian restaurants). But, if the cook actually knows how to work with vegetarian ingredients, you can get some awesome results. The divide between a dish at Gobo and the pasta with grilled vegetables you would find at the local Benigan's is wide enough to fit the Russian army.
The real issue here, I think is that vegetarian cuisine (as opposed to vegetarian food, which was eaten by default for millenia) is a relatively new concept. Vegetarian chefs today grew up in a world without vegetarian restaurants - they were lucky if there were vegetarian options on the menu - and we still don't really have culinary academies for vegetarians. So a lot of chefs have basically been winging it - some have done pretty well with themselves and some are cooking dishes their grandmothers used to make, but without the meat. Obviously it will taste like something is missing in the latter cases.
Our bodies actually aren't that well adapted to eating meat. If you look at the physiology of true carnivores, a humas physiology is much more like that of a herbivore. Our digestive tracts are long, carnivores are short (so that rotting flesh can get out quickly). Our canine teeth are hardly canine teeth (I highly doubt that our canine teeth could be used to kill and rip apart the flesh of an animal).
Meat based diets don't necessarily taste better. I am a vegan, and share vegan food with many of my omnivorous friends. All of whom think that most of what I serve is better than it's meat based counterpart. Not to mention, the meat you are eating is seasoned and cooked, so as to disquise it's true taste.
Animals can not be slaughtered humanely, that's such an oxymoron. Slaughter is never humane. Every life has value, and taking that life is never the right thing to do. Besides that fact, it's not just the slaughter of these animals that is inhumane, it is the conditions in which they are forced to live and the abuses they are forced to endure just to satisfy your tastebuds.
Using the argument that carnivores in the wild kill for their food is utterly ridiculous. There are many animal behaviors that humans don't engage in and would never dream of using as an excuse. For instance, some male animals kill and eat their young......I certainly hope you, Tim, would never do such a thing. And I think we can all agree that the argument "animals in the wild do it" would be a pretty lame argument for this behavior.
I'm sorry you have such a bad experience with your brother, but that has nothing to do with vegetarianism. Sounds like you have some issues you need to work out with him there!!
OMG, thank you! You hit everything on the nail. I just don't get it. It feels like getting attacked by a religious person. "What you don't eat meat, then what do you believe in?!"
I speak up for myself when friends, family members, & strangers question my food ethics. They either don't believe my information or they don't care and state it. Yet when I cook for them, they can't get enough and brag about it to others. Go figure.
What really gets to me, is being harassed by meat eaters. We went Organic before we went veggie and my daughter has been given a hard time by friends & adults for years as well as been close to being physically attacked for being this way. The kids are just as bad as the parents.
We will live longer, healthier lives, we will have less diseases, and we are helping the environment. What is so evil about that?! I'm sorry I guess haven't met any veggies that preach down the throats of meat eaters, unless asked or cornered to defend themselves, but I can guarantee that every veggie has been ridiculed in some way more than once. Ever notice that people who THINK they know always go after the people who KNOW they know.
As human beings have evolved, and started cooking meat, it became easier to chew and thus we lost the huge choppers of Australopithecus and so on. What are you saying, we aren't able to consume meat effectively? Untrue. Just because a bunch of Arkansas fatties eat their weight in burgers, then have digestive upset, doesn't invalidate the overall practice of meat-eating.
The taste thing is subjective. Fact is, though, if vegetarian diets were so delicious, everyone would be eating that way. But they aren't. Also, various surveys of chefs show most cook with meat all the time and prefer to have it as an option in dishes they serve.
My biggest quibble with your response is the ridiculous statement that animals can't be slaughtered humanely. At one extreme, you can raise animals on a free-range, eco-farm, and let them romp in the fields, then one day, anaesthetize them and kill them without causing pain. But certainly, you could apply this principle of minimizing distress to animals in the regulations imposed on the food industry.
Your bigger issue, which is the real crux of the matter, is that taking an animal life is "never the right thing to do." Just as a shark has the "right" to consume a tuna, and as a result, keep himself alive and happy, I have the right to eat animals. My life is more valuable than that of a pig, end of story, full stop. Same goes for animal testing, and all other practices that advance human well-being. If you disagree, I hope you are diligently eliminating all animal-tested medicines, tools, and procedures from your medical treatment as well. But I doubt you are.
My point about animals killing other animals is that predators are causing horrible animal suffering in the wild, and yet we do nothing about that -- they get a pass because somehow they are "natural". Why isn't my killing of a chicken "natural"? (Hey, if you truly cared about animal suffering, you would be out there with a baton protecting bunnies from wolves.)
Finally, why do you have the right to eat a tomato or any other vegetable? Who gave you ownership of those living things? They may not be "conscious" according to Western science but they have a right to life as well, don't they? And if you can eat a tomato or a rutabaga, why can't I cut down a tree and use it to build my house? Some environmentalists would freak out at that.
What's your point? You could invert nearly everything you've said, most of which is subjective, irrelevant, overly broad or outright distortions and make the case for being a vegetarian. Personal anecdotes and an anti-establishment stance doesn't prove the efficacy of a diet any more than moralizing about animal rights or obsessing over animal based products.
As a former meat eater, I wouldn't say necessarily that meat tastes better, but just that being a vegetarian by definition reduces some of the variety of food you eat. And as a true foodie, I love variety, and definitely miss some of the dishes I can't make anymore. But there are also an amazing amount you can do with vegetables. I think I eat a more diverse diet than anyone I know.
Your brother sounds like an ass. Don't blame all vegetarians for his behavior.
As a former meat eater, I wouldn't say necessarily that meat tastes better, but just that being a vegetarian by definition reduces some of the variety of food you eat. And as a true foodie, I love variety, and definitely miss some of the dishes I can't make anymore. But there are also an amazing amount you can do with vegetables. I think I eat a more diverse diet than anyone I know.
Your brother sounds like an ass. Don't blame all vegetarians for his behavior.
animal factory farming is really polluting our earth. and our bodies. try to eat more plant based food grown locally.
I have to wonder how much of the improved health comes from eschewing meat and how much simply comes from not eating rapidly prepared foods? Still, despite a human's purported ability to rise above his original programming/genetics, it is difficult to think humans should have an entirely meat free diet, what with those four canine teeth in one's smile :)
What's your point? You could invert nearly everything you've said, most of which is subjective, irrelevant, overly broad or outright distortions and make the case for being a vegetarian. Personal anecdotes and an anti-establishment stance doesn't prove the efficacy of a diet any more than moralizing about animal rights or obsessing over animal based products.
Opps! this post should be a reply to Tim not stand alone.
Not really.
On taste, call a vote and ask people what they prefer. Vegetarianism doesn't win the taste test -- it just doesn't. It has its appeal, and there are many dishes that are lovely, but excluding meat from one's diet is an extreme step most people won't take.
Health-wise, the evidence ain't there. It just isn't. Peer-reviewed studies in major medical journals can't prove anything about a sensible vegetarian diet vs. a sensible meat diet. Gina Kolata at the New York Times has written about this extensively. Yes, include veggies, but don't EXCLUDE meat. People in Asia and the Mediterranean live to ripe old ages on diets of meat or fish, rice, legumes, pasta and veggies.
Oh and by the way, I said "I'M' not a vegetarian BECAUSE... so DUH, I was being subjective from the outset.
Actually there is no harm in excluding meat in a balanced diet as countless numbers of scientific studies have shown but I guess you have to see value in science to consider that valid. Whatever, we could go back and forth forever. You simply don't believe it to be true so to each their own.
While I love veggies and eat them all the time, mostly due to having a Mediterranean wife, I do find vegetarians to be accusational quite often. Not so much directly, but subtly. Even in this article, with statements such as "I'd long thought that eating a (once) living thing seemed fundamentally immoral," the judgement is dripping.
I heard the best tack on this from a food critic on NPR, who noted how arrogant it is to declare 90% of the world population to be in violation of basic moral precepts every day of their lives as they prepare their daily sustenance. This attitude indicts ethnic cuisines across the globe, and presumes a higher morality in the rich, developed world, (some parts of vegetarian India notwithstanding.)
One can rail against our fast food lunacy without negating millenia of evolution. We have eyes adapted to depth perception so we can stab and catch prey. We have teeth adapted rip flesh as well as grind grains. We are predators. We are omnivores. That's the way it is. No fake morality whether from deluded religous nuts or silly lefty crackpots will undo the fact that we are animals who must kill something to survive, whether plant or animal.
Your argument seems to prove too much; my teeth seem well enough adapted to rip the flesh of a certain Roguish Patrick in my quest for calories and amino acids after my depth perception has enabled me to render same unable to resist, yet I would consider that to be, at least generally, pretty immoral, even if 90% percent of the human population of the earth disagreed with me. Perhaps (shockingly!) there are moral distinctions to be made between classes of living beings, although what distinctions exist between which classes is surely debatable.
I'm not sure that 90% of the world population eats meat daily. Certainly in the developed world, but meat is considerably more expensive than other food stuffs, so isn't eaten as frequently in the developing world. This was all the more true before the Industrial Revolution, when meat was eaten much more rarely - for big feasts and such rather than every day. If you look at world history since the dawn of agriculture, 99% of humanity has eaten vegetarian diets about 95% of the time. Eating meat three meals a day is only "normal" in the context of current industrial societies.
Becoming a vegetarian because one feels that killing animals is morally wrong has always struck me as shallow and naïve. My sister and brother-in-law are "moral" vegetarians who eat seafood. Clearly, the intensity of their moral indignation about killing animals is directly proportional their perception of the amount of pain and suffering those animals experience when killed. Mammals howl and scream during slaughter, birds screech and squawk, fish and crustaceans just flop around, and shellfish do nothing. Plants obviously, show nothing in death; a radish exhibits neither death throes nor howls of pain. I guess that makes it moral to eat a radish (or for my sister and brother-in-law, a scallop) but not a cow. This kind of moral superiority scale is identical to the medieval Chain of Being discredited by science hundreds of years ago. A scale based upon, 1. How much one empathizes with a particular organism's death, and, 2. How "superior" (closer to God?) one organism is compared to another, is a simplistic and primitive way to come to moral conclusions.
Yeah, again, proving too much here. Since there is no Chain of Being making humans more important than radishes, it must be the case that it is equally moral to kill and eat both humans and radishes. Er, I beg to disagree.
Lol. You're right. And I am morally opposed to eating people. I just wish I could enjoy a grilled T-bone with my sister...
So, I guess you won't be applying for the Soylent Green Marketing Department opening... (just a joke there...)
I'm finding the whole "Moral" argument thread here weird - I thought it pretty clear that morals are evolutionary shorthand for best practices for survival (taboos on incest avoid genetic susceptability to diseases; taboos on foods that end up putting you at risk; avoidance of cannibalism which defeats prion diseases; etc..)
When hungry or protein starved, "long pork" becomes moral pretty fast. And in some cultures, it's highly moral to eat the brains of your deceased family members (hence the discovery of kuru).
Food choices are just that - choices. There are economic arguments about the cost of meat not reflected in its price, true, and for Western culture, there is not yet a well established vegetarian tradition (so vegetarian cuisine is in its infancy), but that will come. But whtn this gets tinged with righteousness and morals, that's an invitation to trouble.
The issue is the infliction of pain and suffering onto something that is capable of feeling it. This scale does actually make sense as a measurement of complexity of nervous systems and capacity to feel pain.
Um, if so many of you weren't trying to convert people who actually like food, your reception amongst normal people would be much warmer.
If you try to clean your house, I'll try to clean mine. Deal?
I am a vegetarian, and I try not to be judgemental or push my vegetarianism on others. But when you are a vegetarian for moral reasons, as Max Fisher is (and I am), it is implied that you feel those that eat meat are, to some degree, immoral. So it is a difficult line to walk. I think people get the most weird and defensive about my vegetarianism are the ones who most agree with me and don't want to have to rethink their choices.
To a comment that was made a while ago, you cannot "anaesthesize" an animal then kill it when it feels no pain. The way these animals are "anaesthesized" is by slitting their throats with chickens, or being shot in the head with a captive-bolt gun with cows and pigs, which I would think is pretty painful. The meat eaters that have problems with veggie diets clearly think there is something wrong with eating meat, or else they wouldn't feel the need to attack veggies out of guilt. If someone thought wearing the color blue was immoral, and I wore blue, I wouldn't attack them because I would know how illogical that thought was. Shouldn't meat eaters feel the same if they are so secure in their choice to eat meat? Also lots of people are confused by vegetarianism and veganism because there usually is no way to live in this society and have everything allign with your morals. I agree that eating fish, chicken, or other sorts of non-human animals is stupid because there is no reason to include these in your diet if you are veggie for moral reasons. But if you are vegetarian for moral reasons, why are you not vegan? These animals giving you milk and eggs live the same horrible lives as soon to be meat animals, and are eventually killed, usually in worse ways than if they are going to be meat because there are no laws protecting them. There are also many other animals killed in the process of producing milk and eggs, if you drink milk you are supporting the killing and horrible lives of male calves for veal, and the killing of male chicks that are of no use to the egg-laying industry. If you are vegetarian and want to try to live a morally consistent life, you should try to eliminate all animal products from your diet. And as a vegan you should try to not buy products tested on animals and so on. But this gets in to a bigger debate about how just about everything we use affects animal's lives, so where do we draw the line? But I think that everyone should have respect for animal life and try their best to use and eat things that do not harm them. Also even if your diet is inconsistent, meat eaters really do not have a right to judge you for doing what you can, because you are at least doing way more for the animals and the planet than they are.
What if you are a vegetarian, not for personal moral reasons, but for human and animal rights reason?
I agree with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Leonardo Da Vinci, Gandhi, Einstein, Carl Sagan and Count Tolstoy - who were all vegetarian for the reason outlined by Pythagoras. These simple reasons have nothing to do with animals.
As long as humans kill and torture animals for taste - there will be no peace and no justice on earth.
This will never be a comfortable discussion as long as suffering, blood, torture and needless killings are involved. This is not a discussion like: Which NFL player was the best ever? Are you Democrat or Republican and what do you think of the GOP and gay marriage? Shall we go to war against a dictator? These are Micky Mouse issues and nobody is directly responsible for the worst torture and suffering the earth has ever witnessed.
In contrast - needless torture and killings for taste and entertainment will never be comfortable to discuss. Even the most civil and friendly discussion will feel awful for both parties.
And - this is not and has never been about "converting" people. You do not convert people from being racists to non-racists. You do not convert people from torturing innocents. You do not convert people from needless killings.... You do not convert people who defend the "might makes right" principles. Noble price winner and Holocaust surviver Isaac Bashevis Singer famously proclaimed that: "In their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka". Do you convert...?
No -"converting" is the wrong term. I personally do not want to convert anybody. I want to stop needless torture and murder by any means necessary. If a friendly word or a joke does the trick - good. If an intelligent argument works - good. If an appeal to ethics and morals works - good. But just like Isaac Bashevis Singer - I am tad pessimistic due to what animal eaters sometimes utter... The torture of humans discussions are usually much more sane.
Some more Isaac Bashevis Singer - who wrote almost as passionately about his vegetarianism as did Tolstoy.
You are responsible. You have a choice.
PS: If you are a vegetarian... I am sure that you never eat any (processed or cooked) foods where the eggs and milk inside were derived from factory farms? I rather you become a meat eater but drop the life-long torture. Life-long torture is always worse than murder.
The most important steps here is to not eat cheese or dishes at restaurants that actually come from factory farms. From whom comes the baby milk and eggs in your coffee and desert at the Coffee Shop? Again:
Life-long torture is always worse than murder.
"Sources of easy meals are gone--restaurants from McDonalds to Bouley, deli counters, most takeout--so I cook nearly everything, and am more skilled for the time and energy that must go into every meal."
To which I can only say "huh?"
I've been vegan for about 12.5 years. I eat restaurant food all the time (way too much, really). Being vegetarian would make eating out even easier.
I live in Minneapolis, which is a pretty good city for veg food, but there are plenty of other places as good or better.
I am a Seventhday Adventist and a Partial Vegetarian. and I am working on becoming totally Vegan. A plant based diet is actually the original diet of the Bible. It has been very hard to give up meat totally. after reading a book called the Pig Book it was easy to give up pork and pork products. But they sure put pork in almost everything and even things you wouldnt thing had any meat stuff in it. So Read the labels.
I also am diabetic and have high blood pressure but since i have began a plant based diet my blood sugars and blood pressure are in much better control. And vegetarian food doesnt have to be bland. There are many spices that really add flavor.
I am not judging anyone because how you eat is your own personal choice and it really is true you are what you eat. I have personally experienced that.
I know this post will go to whoever i clicked reply on but i just wanted to share with everyone.